Disputation Mikhail Fominykh - Department of Computer and ...

Phase 4 – Collaborative construction in a 3D CVE. During this phase, the participants implement their proposals
in a 3D environment, discuss them with each other, and reflect on their activities. Collaborative work on 3D
content and active discussions allow participants to deepen their understanding of the topic visualized. Constant
on-demand assistance should be provided to keep the participants focused on their task and not on the technical
issues. Individual and group reflection should be organized during this phase. It helps to keep the participants
focused and reminds them of the expected progress. In our studies, we devote about 5 weeks to this phase.
Phase 5 – Presentations of the resultant constructions. This phase includes preparing scenarios and presentation of
constructions at a session in front of an audience. Such an event allows receiving feedback. It creates a competition
and motivates the participants to elaborate their constructions. In addition, public presentations triggers additional
exploration of the topic presented as it should be explained to other people. We used the role-playing method for
presentations in two of our studies, and it proved to be suitable.
Phase 6 – Final reflection and discussion. When the constructions are presented, the participants should be given
the final assignment – to discuss and reflect on their experience. The task may include analysis of their own
construction structured according to the Typology of 3D Content and Visualization Means. In addition, it may
include analysis of the collaborative process and questions related to the topic studied. In our studies, we devote
about two weeks for this phase.
5. Conclusions and future work
In this paper, we focus on the use of educational visualizations in 3D CVEs and present our approach. In
particular, we provide a characterization framework – Typology of 3D Content and Visualization Means, which can
be used for analysing educational visualizations in 3D CVEs. In addition, we describe the Methodology for learning
with educational visualizations in 3D CVEs, which can be used as a guideline. The main contributions of the paper
are based on the results of explorative qualitative case studies conducted in the Virtual Campus of NTNU in
Second Life and earlier studies in Active Worlds. Our future work will include further research into the use of
CVEs in educational settings, further improving our approach and developing the Virtual Campus environment.
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